Joe Clark is one of the most enthusiastic people I’ve heard talk about accessiblity. When WCAG 2 came out he was the first to point out issues with the documentation, and must still be among the few who have read all WCAG 2 documents. His commitment is especially evident when it comes to multimedia accessibillity (I still remember him gathering a posse to go and see captioned films after @media 2005).
Now Joe is starting a research project to establish a set of standards for captioning, audio description, subtitling, and dubbing. It will also develop training and certification and even create specialist fonts to use. Now all this costs money and Joe is looking for funding to enable him to go out and get the $7 million Canadian the project will need over the life of the project. He’s after $7,777 to enable him to devote all his time to fundraising for 4 months - so this is subsidence living - and is asking for help from the development community to help achieve this target. When you consider the size of the community and the sum needed I’m sure he’ll have no problem getting there, and having seen Joe’s enthusiasm I’m sure he’ll manage to get the project funding too.
Head over to the Open & Closed Project to find out more and donate.